Thursday, July 19, 2007

Three Kinds of Random

There is a sign on the wall in our cafeteria at work, above the table where the plastic forks and napkins are dispensed. It says, in a quite offensively nannyish tone, "2006: We used 16,345 napkins per day last year! That's right! Not per week, or per month! PER DAY!2007: YOU DECIDE!"

In a place that feeds about 5,000 people a day, that works out to something like 3.269 napkins per person, an amount I don't find particularly unreasonable or wasteful. As a Person of Beard, I go through that many eating a cup of yogurt, keeping my mustache presentable.

So I am going to deface this sign. But I haven't decided on quite the proper wording, the mots justes.

I'm wavering between

I AM SO FUCKING SORRY!

and

OOPSIE! THAT WAS ME. SORRIES! (accompanied with a little sad-face emoticon).

What say you?

I was asked by my boss to do an assessment of Stumbleupon, a web tool that directs you to web sites that cater to the interests you declare while signing up to use the product. My employers are contemplating a somewhat similar concept.

I signed up, got the Stumbleupon browser toolbar, checked some boxes indicating some random interests -- you know, music, politics, golf, masturbation. That sort of thing.

Man, did I get hooked fast. I spent all of yesterday and most of this morning clicking "stumble...stumble...stumble...." Goddamned thing's practically psychic! Voodoo ESP! He'p me somebody! I's hip-mo-tized!

(Yeah, yeah, you've been using it since 2003...blah blah. I have a life that frequently doesn't involve the Internet in any way, shape or form -- imagine that!)

The more finely tuned irony would be to post exactly the same sign above the dispenser in each bathroom stall. "We used precisely 485,354 squares of shitrag PER DAY last year. Greedy? Overmoist? YOU DECIDE!"